Increasing availability of digital manufacturing is causing architects to ask serious questions of their profession. Where lies the craft in a project? Is it better to specialise or to co-ordinate others? And for new graduates, emerging into an uncertain market, is there opportunity to be both digital dreamers and hands-on makers?

These questions – and many more – were debated at Fabricate on 15–16 April reports David Shanks, a final-year student of the Graduate Diploma in Architecture at the UCL Bartlett in Unit 23, who was one of ten students who helped with the conference.

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